Country Nights

by Winter Renshaw

  With my name in lights and a new city to sleep in night after night, there was never a shortage of pretty girls offering to keep me warm at night. In the earlier days, the attention was nice. But it all got old quick. And then I met Daisy.

  “No one’s ever going to love you the way I do, Beau,” Daisy’d said with tears in her eyes the night I ended our engagement. “I don’t know who you’re all caught up with, but no one on God’s green earth’s dumb enough to love a man with a heart as black as yours. No one except me.” I sat back like some jerk, watching silently as she stuffed clothes into a suitcase and berated herself out loud for ever falling for me in the first place.

  I spent the first half of my twenties keeping my options open and trying to fuck Dakota out of my system. I’d figured leaving her hurt me more than it hurt her. She was a resilient little spitfire who’d be snatched up by some pretty little college boy soon enough, I told myself.

  The first time I fucked a woman who wasn’t Dakota, the promises we’d made to each other that summer under the stars played so loud in my head I’d almost lost my hard on. I’d never forget the raven-haired girl that bounced on my cock and screamed my name with tears streaming down her face as I made her little dreams come true. To have that kind of power over someone at such a young age was a pivotal moment for me, and just being a simple farm boy from small town Kentucky, I wasn’t equipped to deal with that kind of influence in the most mature of ways.

  Still, as the black-haired beauty rode me to oblivion, I died a little on the inside. And when it was all over with, I took a shot of fine Kentucky bourbon to numb the guilt and passed out cold.

  It got easier the second time.

  And the third.

  All the fame and money in the world had been dumped into my lap the second Dakota left for school. I never planned for any of it, and I certainly never planned for the way it ended up turning me into a self-seeking, twenty-year-old bastard who crushed those promises he made to a sweet-faced girl like bones to dust.

  The prick I’d become had never stopped loving her, but he sure as fuck didn’t deserve her. And for that reason, I stayed the hell away from her.

  By the time I got all cleaned up and headed back outside, Dakota was waiting for me, leaning against New Old Blue with one knee bent and her foot resting against the white-walled tire.

  “Hop in, pretty lady,” I drawled, pulling out the keys from my jeans pocket.

  “Going to tell me where you’re taking me?” she asked, batting her lashes as she buckled her seatbelt a minute later.

  “You’ll see soon enough.” I shifted the truck as we rounded the corner and pulled down a paved road that led to The Overlook.

  A quaint cul-de-sac filled with McMansions, it wasn’t nearly as picturesque as it was when it was a secluded mess of timber and privacy, but it still had our stamp all over it.

  “The Overlook,” Dakota said, the corner of her mouth pulling up as if she were replaying the many nights we’d slow danced in front of the headlights of my truck. “Look at all these houses. It’s too bad.”

  I rounded the neighborhood before heading out and driving north. In recent months, I’d discovered a new little development called Hickory Pass. Same sort of set up with undisturbed timber, it was damn near an exact replica of our old spot.

  Coming to a stop and setting the brake, I flipped the headlights on and nodded for Dakota to meet me in front of the truck. She stifled a grin as she obeyed my silent command, and within thirty seconds my hands were gripping her hips as her head rested on my shoulders.

  “We don’t have much time on account of New Old Blue’s battery,” I said, “but I wanted to get one dance with you while I had you.”

  She sighed the kind of happy sigh that made me feel like there might still be hope for us. I pulled in a lungful of the warm clean scent that left the top of her pretty little head.

  “We need music,” she said wistfully.

  “Not a problem,” I said. Pressing my lips, I began to hum a soft tune. The words played in my head, but the melody rumbled in my chest, inviting Dakota to melt into me. And for all of three minutes, melt into me she did.

  “You know I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” she said a moment after the song had ended. She pulled herself away, though my hands reached for hers, catching them in mine and lacing our fingers together. I couldn’t bring myself to let her go entirely. Not yet.

  “Stay,” I said. I wasn’t asking.

  “You know I can’t.” She laughed, tilting her head and gazing into the distance. Funny how just a few days ago, she was this poker-faced Ice Queen who resisted everything about me, and now she was letting me hold her in my arms and unfolding like a flower in the spring.

  “I’ve never loved anyone else the way I loved you,” I said, my voice low and my jaw clenched. “And I never will. You’re it for me, Dakota.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “There she is,” Harrison announced as I pulled my suitcase inside the front door of our apartment. “The woman of the hour.”

  His face captured an overdone excitement I hadn’t seen in him since I didn’t know when.

  “Dare I ask if you missed me?” I set my purse down on the antique, marble-topped buffet he’d gifted me on our first wedding anniversary. We’d found it at an antique shop in the Hamptons, and supposedly it had once belonged to a Kennedy.

  He stood with his hands in his pockets, his cheeks rosy as his eyes drank me in from head to toe. He lunged for my suitcase. “Here, let me get that.”

  I resisted the urge to ask him what’d gotten into him. It was as if I left Manhattan with this micro-managing curmudgeon of an ex-husband and returned to find he’d been completely transformed into the man I’d once fallen hard in wonderment with.

  That’s all it had ever been – wonderment. I realized that as I was walking down the aisle on my wedding day. With the most breathtaking designer gown sucking in all my curves and a bouquet of fresh peonies in my hand, a sick feeling flooded my stomach when I looked up at my groom and saw the face of the man I’d been unable to love even after a handful of good, hard years.

  “I ordered us takeout,” Harrison said after rolling my bag to my room and returning. He followed me to the living room where I collapsed upon the sofa. “Got your favorite. Special number four from Happy Panda.”

  “Are you feeling all right?” I teased.

  Harrison lowered himself to his leather chair, his eyes locked on mine. I waited for him to ask about Kentucky or how the interview went or what kind of quotes I got on tape, but he only sat there, staring at me.

  “I made an appointment with Dr. Goldberg,” he said, breaking the silence. We’d attempted marital counseling once. It was an hour-long session that had ended with Dr. Goldberg telling us that neither of us were vested enough in our marriage to make it worth her while to even treat us.

  “Harrison,” I cocked my head to the side. “We’re not married. Why would you do that?”

  “Coco,” he responded, parroting my tone. “We might not be married, but we can still salvage this. I want what we used to have. I miss that. And being away from you this week made me realize that you’re the kind of girl worth fighting for. I’m sorry I didn’t fight hard enough for you.”

  “Harrison.”

  “Please.” His eyes flashed with fired-up determination. “The last two years, going back and forth like we’ve been doing, it needs to stop. We’re grown adults here. It’s time to piss or get off the pot.”

  “Elegant,” I laughed, standing up.

  “You know what I mean,” he huffed. He stood and stepped toward me, taking my hands in his. Perhaps at the peak of our marital days, we’d had an unstoppable physical passion for each other, but the emotions were always surface-level. And in the end, we discovered we loved our jobs more than we loved each other.

  “Come on, don’t do this. I’ve been traveling all day. I’m exhausted.”

  “What about last month?” he asked, referring t
o the night we’d shared a bottle of wine and one thing led to another. It seemed innocent enough at the time, and my physical attraction to Harrison was still rampant and undeniable despite the dissolution of our marriage. Sex with him was always chocolate cake. A guilty pleasure. A special occasion desert.

  “That was…” I shrugged. “It was what it was.”

  “So can we go to counseling? Can we try again?”

  “This is coming out of nowhere, Harrison. To be honest, you’re kind of freaking me out. Can’t you go back to having a stick up your ass and only discussing work things with me?”

  I pushed past him, making a beeline for my suite.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?

  Stopping in my tracks like a rabbit in front of a dog, I didn’t even turn around when I asked, “Pardon?”

  “Beau.” The sound of Beau’s name uttered in my home coming from the Harrison’s mouth was a jarring combination. “Talked to your mother the other day. She told me all about your little history with Beau.”

  My mother didn’t know half of what went down with Beau and me, but still, I could only imagine what she’d told Harrison. Never ill-intentioned, the woman just loved to gossip and stir pots.

  “Your mother told me you and Beau used to date. Said you were quite distraught over him when he left you,” Harrison’s tone held me at verbal knifepoint.

  Damn it, Mama.

  She’d been stirring pots since the day I was born when she’d told two different men they were my father, garnering all sorts of attention and becoming the talk of the town. When I came out looking damn near identical to Bobby Andrews, Mama latched onto him for dear life, keeping him close until the day he passed away in a motorcycle crash outside Louisville.

  “He didn’t leave me,” I corrected him. “I went off to college and we decided to break up.”

  “And then he turned into this famous musician and you were left trying to carve a name for yourself in order to make yourself feel better.” The ugly part of Harrison’s personality was still alive and well. I’d only seen it a small handful of times during the time I’d known him, but when he took that tone with me, it always sat heavy in the center of my body and turned the sky red. “Is that why you wanted to go into journalism, Coco? Because it was the only way you could become famous and show this ex-boyfriend of yours that you could succeed without him by your side?”

  “Not. At. All.” The words gritted like sandpaper in my mouth as I turned to face him. It was the truth. Growing up, we never had cable. Watching T.V. at our house mostly consisted of watching major network news programs. Barbara Walters was my idol. I used to switch on the closed-caption function and practice reading the news in front of Addison and an assortment of stuffed animals.

  “It is, isn’t it?” Harrison laughed a hearty laugh as he walked to the mini bar and poured himself a glass of single-malt Glenfiddich. “God, it’s so junior high, Coco.”

  I silently cursed my mother for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. And why had those two been talking in the first place?

  “This whole jealous ex-husband thing is really unattractive.” I crossed my arms, squaring my shoulders. We weren’t married, and I wasn’t with Beau. I didn’t need to explain or defend a damn thing.

  Harrison downed the rest of his drink and slammed the crystal tumbler on the table. His eyes locked into mine as he lunged toward me like a fire soaring upward.

  “I still love you, damn it,” he said, cupping my face in his shaking hands. “Imagining you with…with that hick, that cowboy…imagining his hands on you, his mouth…imagining him touching your body…”

  His eyes flickered like a shattered mirror, like a man who’d just lost everything he’d suddenly discovered he’d ever wanted.

  “I love you, Coco,” he said. “We belong together. We’re cut from the same cloth, you and me. I knew it since the moment I first saw you at that audition.”

  He’d been working at a local news station in New York, and I’d auditioned for a morning anchor position. I didn’t get the job, but he called and offered to help me work on some things. At the time, a handsome producer several years my senior showering me with all kinds of affection was a kind of exhilaration and excitement I’d never known before. That’s when the wonderment had started.

  “We had a good run, Harrison,” I said, feeling his scotch-tinged breath upon my face. Our lips held in limbo mere inches apart, as if he was two seconds from trying to claim them as his again.

  Reality hit halfway into the second year of our marriage, when work took a front seat and everything he’d said or done that had once given me butterflies suddenly felt overdone and contrived. That’s when the wonderment ended.

  “We didn’t try hard enough,” Harrison said. “We should’ve tried harder.”

  For as long as I lived, I’d never forget walking out of that therapy session with him as a general sense of relief washed over me. We’d walked into that building as struggling marital partners, and we walked out of that building as new old friends. He’d held my hand the whole walk home, and we’d spent the better part of that evening reminiscing about our better days. That night we flipped through our wedding album and shared a bottle of wine, and after that we changed into sweats and I helped him move into the guest suite.

  Addison never understood it, but I couldn’t help that. I didn’t understand it either. Harrison had been my rock when I first moved to the city. He was the first friend I made. The first guy I trusted with my heart after Beau broke it. He got me. And for that reason, I never felt the need to let him out of my life completely.

  “But we didn’t and what’s done is done,” I said as I felt his mouth inch closer to mine. “Please don’t.”

  I backed away from him. “I think it’s time I move out. Get my own place. I’m meeting with Addison tonight, so I’ll have her find me an apartment. It’s going to be better this way.”

  “He doesn’t deserve you, Coco,” Harrison said, letting his hands fall from my face to the bend in my arms. “You should know things about him. He’s a womanizer. He’s been around. He’s-”

  “Enough,” I silenced him, unwilling to listen to his spiteful word vomit. I wasn’t sure if any of it was true or if he’d hired a private detective on some jealous whim while I was gone, but my situation was already confusing enough. “You will not speak about him.”

  I didn’t allow Beau to speak of Harrison, so it was only fair.

  “Pull yourself together, Harrison. Your mother would be ashamed right now if she saw you acting like a petulant child. I know you were raised better.” I pulled my arms out of his grasp with one quick tug and took a step back. “You’re thirty-fucking-eight for Christ sake.”

  “Get that twang out of your mouth.” Harrison rushed at me once again, smashing his lips against mine in a frighteningly desperate attempt to salvage what was rapidly disintegrating before our very eyes. Gone was his class, his subtle arrogance, his New England aristocratic pedigree. Harrison Bissett was a desperate, desperate man showing all his cards and wearing all his colors.

  “God, Harrison, what are you doing?” My face scrunched as I peeled myself from his clutches.

  “You fucking taste like him,” he seethed, his shoulders drawn back as he reached for my arm. I’d never seen him acting this way before, holding onto me with a bulldog grip. Years ago, I’d caught a glimpse of a nasty, jealous side of him once. A man was hitting on me at a bar when Harrison had slipped off to use the restroom. When he returned I thought he was going to beat the man to a bloody pulp, but after a heated exchange, the bartender asked us to leave before it escalated.

  My fingertips rose to my lips, tracing along the tender space where Beau had left his mark on me that morning before I left the ranch. “Yeah. I kissed him. But I didn’t cheat on you, Harrison. You’re acting like I’m still your wife, and that’s completely absurd.”

  I imagined the things Beau would do to Harrison if he could see what was unfolding. He’d tear him
limb by limb and throw him out our tenth story window when he was done.

  “Believe it or not, I still love you, Coco,” Harrison said in a way that I wholeheartedly believed. “I never stopped. I pulled back because you pulled back. I thought giving you more space would somehow bring you back to me. And when that didn’t work, I thought giving you the career of your dreams – something no other man could ever do – would show you how much I loved you. I meant it when I said I was your biggest fan. I have been since the day we met.”

  “Harrison.” I crossed my arms, though not in an angry way. My heart broke for him, because I saw a part of me in his eyes. The desperate longing, the clinging onto something so hard it slipped through your hands like tiny grains of sand. I’d been there. I’d felt it before. “Then why didn’t you speak up at therapy? You just sat there, going along with everything I said and agreeing that you weren’t vested anymore.”

  “Do you have any idea what it feels like to look into the eyes of the person you love more than anything in the world and hear them say they don’t feel the same way about you?”

  Yes, more than anything.

  I knew that feeling like an old friend.

  Harrison snapped backward, falling into his easy chair like a rubber band that had been pulled to far. “The morning of that therapy session, I was looking for an old sweater in our closet.” He reached down, retrieving something from under his chair: my box of all things Beau. “Found this.”

  He patted the top of the box, running his hand along the smooth mahogany as his lips formed a pained smile.

  “I knew,” he said. “I knew when I found this that I could never compete with any of it. I had nothing on this guy.”

  So that’s how he knew about Beau. He didn’t talk to my mother. He’d known all along.

  Although it felt like a violation of my privacy, his admission was the final puzzle piece I needed to understand what had happened that day we decided to file for divorce. He was angry with me, and the things he’d said in our session had given our therapist the impression that he wasn’t vested in us. She mistook his anger and bitterness for something else entirely, and I interpreted it as the sign that I needed to finally exit the marriage in a graceful way.